Masochistic TTAG Reader Banters with Daily Banter’s Oliver Willis

TTAG reader Andrew Egilmez had a read of Oliver Willis’ article The Perverse Reality of Modern Gun Culture. The dailybanter.com columnist lauded by the Boston Globe (“When Oliver Willis talks, the blogosphere cares”) reckons “The gun culture is all about protecting your home from mysterious, dark figures that are always a second away from attacking/raping you and your family.” Dark figures. Geddit? Our man Egilmez does. He emailed the following literary conversation with Mr. Willis, who starts his anti-gun agitprop thusly . . .

I will concede that the left has been on the losing side of the battle over guns for some time.

Yaaaay! Okay, sorry, had to get that out of the way . . .

We should do everything we can to limit the amount of innocent people killed by guns.

Sounds like he’s against innocent people dying. Let’s hold onto this. I’ll get back to it.

It doesn’t guarantee the right to every killing implement under the sun.

Hello, Mr. Strawman, how are you today?

When the Founders wrote the Second Amendment they did so in a world that couldn’t even envision a machine gun . . .

Man, if only there was some way to easily research the history of machine guns. Some way to look up their first appearance in US history and see how it coincided with the Second Amendment. WHOOPS!

And why even mention machine guns? How many people are killed by a machine gun every year? It couldn’t have been a poorly thought out criticism of the Second Amendment? “SEE, they couldn’t have thought of this, so let’s disregard any intention they had for creating the amendment.”

Before Sandy Hook, President Obama and Congressional Democrats were not doing anything about guns. Democrats hadn’t done anything for almost 20 years on the issue.

Yes, other things can kill you – cars, household accidents, etc. — but unlike a gun, none of those things is designed to kill. A gun is.

Getting back to my earlier comment, sure, more innocent people are killed by “other things” (significantly more, obviously) BUT GUNS ARE DESIGNED TO KILL. Sorry innocent people killed by other things, Mr. Willis would care more if it was a gun versus a swimming pool.

I love the casual sentence to completely cast aside the fact that innocent people die in far greater numbers by other objects. I’m pretty sure I half assed a few college papers using this method. I’m also pretty sure every professor would highlight that sentence and go “Uh…expand on this?”

Guns are implements of killing, if we are to have them as part of our society — and yes, we have — we should do what we can to limit their capacity to kill the innocent while preserving a Constitutional right to possess them. If that steps on the toes of the conspiracy obsessed or a group of people who believe false statistics, oh well.

I have to be a masochist to keep reading this stuff. There can be no other explanation. [ED: join the club]

1. All pools are always filled with water.
2. Never let anything in the pool you’re not willing to destroy.
3. Keep your speedo off until you’re ready to cannonball.
4. Be sure of what’s under the diving board and beyond it.

Since they can’t really refute the stats themselves that go against their position, the stats MUST be false. (in their eyes.) Forget that they can’t come up with statistics that can be backed up that counter the truth by reputable sources all can agree upon… it’s “the man behind the curtain,” and “we” are supposed to ignore it because of their illusions and delusions.

My guns have never killed a person. Paper plates and balloons yes, but a person? Never.

This is one of those people that(incorrectly) equate “gun” with “automatic death”. The mere sight of a gun will cause you to die in a grotesque manner, like when the Nazi’s opened the Ark in Indiana Jones; your skin to melt, your blood will burst into flames and you’ll have diarrhea at inappropriate times.

The capacity to kill is not dictated by the gun/knife/blunt object but the person who is wielding it and their intent, Mr. Willis has yet to understand this. Anything and I mean ANYTHING can be used as a weapon or to kill someone; all the user needs is the will to use it.

What is funny is that a number of states that are popular for swimming pools and are popular havens for liberals have passed escalating laws with respect towards safety requirements that are required in the permitting processing to get a swimming pool. All because common sense went out the window, so it started with fencing, then added child resistant gates and now child resistance locks on gates and fencing that can’t be scaled (based on my relatives issues with building an pool in PA). There was no grandfather in after this last round of laws were passed and code enforcement officers went out like gang busters raking in the cash from the violators. In the long run these rules haven’t done much to have the death rate from children in swimming pools hit 0, all they have done is triple the price of pools and made it such a regulatory burden that the industry is dying.

“… all they have done is triple the price of pools and made it such a regulatory burden that the industry is dying.”

And that was their plan all along. Big Brother knew that they could not outright ban pools so they did the next best thing: make owning a pool so onerous and expensive that most people decide not to have pools.

I don’t think that was their plan at all. I think their plan was to collect as much money as they could, and when that dried up, move on to the next manufactured crisis. Then rinse and repeat until retirement.

I always get a kick out of the argument that our founders never intended for us to have semi-automatic weapons, or handguns, or whatever. On the contrary, the founders envisioned that the people should have access to the same weapons as the government. They would be appalled to see that machine guns are so heavily restricted, while the government has unfettered access to every piece of hardware on the planet.

And of course, the always-funny, inherently paradoxical position of the antis. “Stop being paranoid. Crime doesn’t happen, which is why you don’t need guns, even though we have enough crime for us to demand gun control to end the blood running in the streets”.

This is EXACTLY right! The second Amendment was designed so that every citizen could own weapons EQUAL to what the army of the day was using so that would insure that the government would not be able to overpower the citizens with superior firepower.

In a heavily industrialized place like the US, near single use ‘cannon’ or directional mines are so cheaply and easily built that one would expect millions to be used in any protracted war involving the civilian population. It’s the poor mans answer to automatic weapons.

He’s not alone, either. A bulk of these people just don’t have the intellectual reach to imagine a time when the government might not be our friends. And if they can imagine it, they just resort to the old canard that a bunch of civilian gun owners are no match for the military. I really think many of them reach the limits of their imaginations and that’s that.

“What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.”

If Willis ever stumbles upon documents called the Federalist Papers, which all liberals should read and attempt to understand before writing such uneducated drivel, he’ll also be exposed to Alexander Hamilton.

“If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government…”

Hamilton and Jefferson were as different politically as you could get. Hamilton was a Federalist who supported a strong central government. Jefferson was a Democratic-Republican who favored states rights.

Yet now you tell me both Hamilton and Jefferson suffered from right-wing paranoia? Brilliant! Simply Brilliant!

I very much enjoyed reading his statement on Twitter last week that the reason I have guns and train with them to protect myself is because the gun lobby has convinced me (white woman) to be terrified that I will be raped by a huge black man.

I actually left a comment on his article here, referenced that tweet. I called him a liar and defied him to prove me wrong. Probably not worth the effort, tho. The article was dated on the 26th, there were other comments from that date up til today–but for all that, mine was number 33. He ain’t exactly drawing herds of readers.

I’m sure most all of the people who HAVE been in the military can make the same claim. I love all vets, but the vast majority never saw armed combat, even our wounded recently have been bombed, not shot in combat.

Which is more sad:
*Something designed to kill which takes out 11,000 people a year (firearms)
OR
*Something designed to help us which kills 32,000 people a year (vehicles)

While I play devil’s advocate a little, I do wish I could throw “innocent” people out of this calculation.
Guns deaths would probably be below 2,000 people. However, there is no real way to know.

The fact of the matter is life is fragile, people die all the time. Its a sad fact of life. Live your
life righteously, do good, try not to be an asshole, and just let people have the right to defend themselves!

Lets solve the root causes of things, we can pretty much assume that many firearms deaths are somehow related to money; Of course the aristocrats and fat cats would rather band-aid the issue rather than face the fact we kill each other for monopoly money.

I’m not religious (perse, or maybe at all, I go back and forth), however the church historically served as an excellent “catch-all” for these disenfranchised people. Its unfortunate the church makes so many mistakes combined with the fact that some left wingers think the idea of religion is dumb (its not, its serves as a framework for civilization and should be respected)

Guns are implements of killing, if we are to have them as part of our society — and yes, we have — we should do what we can to limit their capacity to kill the innocent while preserving a Constitutional right to possess them.

Huh, you know that actually aligns really well with my own attitude. The key observation being that the phenomenon of a “gun” killing an innocent really begins with a decision firing in the brain of the person holding it.

So, education (like making the 4 rules and other gun facts, like their mechanics, universally taught in school) is a good strategy to guard against people behaving irresponsibly or treating firearms with a cavalier attitude. If everyone recognized safe gun handling practices we would naturally increase awareness of people behaving suspiciously or unsafely.

However, education alone cannot address the problem of those who simply do not care for the goodwill of others and would harm innocents for their own gains or pleasures. How do you stop someone like that? By stopping them. With force. And the more people who are willing to employ force against evil and equipped and prepared / trained to do so, the safer will will all be. Fans of “protecting the innocent” would do well to educate themselves about the realities of firearms and stop confusing the willingness of a gun owner to use deadly force with the desire to do so.